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  1. #11
    Senior Dog Jeff's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by sandyut View Post
    Interesting discussion. I will look at the gentle leader and volhard collars. My neighbor picked up a "shock collar" and uses it in vibrate and beep modes only. seems to have done the trick. Any have much experience with these?
    Vibrate and beep mode I would consider a great alternative. The biggest thing you do is when they get obsessed with something this breaks their concentrations. If gives them a chance to come back a little to reality. So if a dog is focused in on another dog or something a vibrate or a beep can break their concentration. You want to redirect though in this situation to make sure they do not focus and lock back in again. I would also use a verbal cue with this as well so eventually you can get rid of this or when yo don't have it on there is a verbal cue you can use to reel them back in.

  2. #12
    Senior Dog Tanya's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by sandyut View Post
    Interesting discussion. I will look at the gentle leader and volhard collars. My neighbor picked up a "shock collar" and uses it in vibrate and beep modes only. seems to have done the trick. Any have much experience with these?
    vibration collar to leash walking? I wouldn't go there, would be pretty difficult to get timing and communication down properly. plus managing a leash, a pager and treats with two hands... and remember the buzz needs to mean one clear thing to the dog (so you need to train and desentize to the collar first as well as train that command under various scenarios to proof)

    There are tons of tools to help ensure you have control of the dog while you train. But to me that's all the tool does, help control to ensure they don't get loose or pull you down the road. The important part is the training you do to teach the dog what is expected (not just what is not expected).

    You can train a dog without a training collar, but this works best with young dogs who haven't built up lots of reinforcement from pulling. Those often need a safe tool to ensure they don't hurt themselves or others during training.note that a flat collar can cause damage to the neck/wind pipe if a dog is pulling regularly.

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  4. #13
    House Broken jenfarm's Avatar
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    We have a slip collar leash (which, after looking at the two collars recommended here, fits like the Volhard collar) that our trainers gave us to use and have used on Chutes. They're coming back later this week to give us a collar that he can wear all the time along with his regular collar as he's now getting to the age where we are going to be introducing corrections to him. For leash training, it's worked OK. Unless a distraction pops up, he does well on it with correcting himself.

    We actually just had a follow up visit with one of our trainers to see how he's been doing and she actually recommended trying a prong collar, if needed. He's starting to show a bit of orneriness as he gets a bit older and he's starting to test us a little bit. She mentioned we may only need to give him one good correction with it for him to realize, "Oh, yeah. I don't like that thing." Sometimes that's all they need. They're working with an adult lab right now that only needed one good correction with a prong collar to get him to stop jumping. Haven't needed it again. Some dogs may be a little more knuckle headed about it. Depends on the dog. We may give it a try if it comes to that, but we don't think we are there yet. Plus, he's still really young to be introducing that big of a corrections with him. We'll see.
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  5. #14
    Senior Dog TuMicks's Avatar
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    Here's the deal...

    Every dog differs. Every person has their own strengths and weaknesses. I get that a person with a bad back, bad knees, poor balance, osteoporosis (the list goes on) doesn't need to be pulled off their feet by an adolescent Labrador. Cruelty is always out. Corrections made out of anger or frustration are at best counterproductive and at worst cruel.

    The answer to the OP's question depends upon variables not discussed in the post. How old is the dog? How out of control (or not) is it? What have they tried to date? What are the training goals?

    The IDEAL situation is to start with a smart, healthy puppy and build the desired behaviors and responses from the beginning, getting all the assistance you need to do it right. But we don't usually live in the ideal world until about we've gone through a number of dogs with whom we try to do the right thing and through whom we learn good-better-best methods.

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  7. #15
    House Broken sandyut's Avatar
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    TuMicks: good points... So, our 13 month old is pretty good on leash, but kinda goes bananas when there are other dogs around. Pulls a little less each month, but I was hoping he would be better by now.

    He is better than Jack was. Jack didn't seem to care what was on his neck - he would just pull harder to get at what he was interested in...

    I wanted to look at alternatives to the prong which is all we have tried.

  8. #16
    Senior Dog Jeff's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by sandyut View Post
    TuMicks: good points... So, our 13 month old is pretty good on leash, but kinda goes bananas when there are other dogs around. Pulls a little less each month, but I was hoping he would be better by now.

    He is better than Jack was. Jack didn't seem to care what was on his neck - he would just pull harder to get at what he was interested in...

    I wanted to look at alternatives to the prong which is all we have tried.
    I personally think if you want to try the vibrating collar it is well worth a try. Your timing does need to be spot on. I would use the beeping rather than the vibration. You just want to break the focus on the other dog and get focus back on you. Practice other things as well just while walking, like the "Watch Me" Where your dog looks at you and gets a treat. This can help get their focus back from other dogs.

    One thing I would also recommend though is a good obedience type class. A good obedience trainer can really help this. One of the things you do in obedience classes is walk by other dogs, lots and lots and lots of times. This helps to desensitize them. You actually get to the point where all the dogs can line up in a line and they take turns walking and weaving through the whole line of dogs. Your dog gets chances to be the one walking and the one just sitting being walked by. This is very hard at first but after a while the dog learns it is no big deal. This is probably what Labradorks was thinking when she recommended an obedience class. These can be frustrating at first but to see the change in your dog as they work through these things will make you smile.

    Also, I do apologize if you thought my original post on prongs and punishment was directed at you it was more for Suzy whom I quoted. Some people defend the use of positive punishment without realizing it for what it is. Again it can be used but there are other ways.

    The whole dog journal has a really good ebook, it's not free, but less than $10 with lots of great information on stopping pulling. Cheaper than obedience classes and the electronic collars.
    Whole Dog Journal

    Look for the "Walking your dog" ebook. I found a lot of great information in there and other links to other resources.

  9. #17
    Senior Dog Snowshoe's Avatar
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    LAT training as per Leslie McDevitt's book, "Control Unleashed" is great for lots of distractions. It got us past a big black dog that would charge the fence at us, and in and out of trials. I didn't discover the book till after I bought the prong. Who knows whether I might have still needed the prong or not.
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  10. #18
    Senior Dog windycanyon's Avatar
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    I love a good prong collar. Herm Sprenger prongs are neither cruel nor painful. When used correctly, there is no pain involved and I've used it on my pups as young as 4 mos successfully. The prongs are very smooth, and only put pressure on the dogs when tightened. Prongs are not intended for pop jerking just in case you were wondering...

    I use an ecollar for distance work and even obed. Guess what? My dogs all respond matter of factly to levels lower than most of my former "critic" friends felt were even annoying (yes, I made them feel my "shock collar" when they used that term w/ me...).

    And agree w/ TuMicks. To all the experts who insist on putting others on guilt trips for their differences in training philosophies, I hope you actually get a performance bred lab someday. And further, I hope your body isn't as sound as it may be at this moment. You'll understand the beauty of using clear and concise information when communicating w/ your pup from the beginning.
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  12. #19
    House Broken sandyut's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jeff View Post

    Also, I do apologize if you thought my original post on prongs and punishment was directed at you it was more for Suzy whom I quoted. Some people defend the use of positive punishment without realizing it for what it is. Again it can be used but there are other ways.
    .
    Not at all! thanks for your comments!

  13. #20
    Senior Dog TuMicks's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tanya View Post
    vibration collar to leash walking? I wouldn't go there, would be pretty difficult to get timing and communication down properly. plus managing a leash, a pager and treats with two hands... and remember the buzz needs to mean one clear thing to the dog (so you need to train and desentize to the collar first as well as train that command under various scenarios to proof)
    Tanya... Yes and no. That timing thing is a real bugger for a klutz like myself. It doesn't matter what method you use. I think I viewed some R+ videos recommended by Labradorks and realized that using the method shown was beyond me, although it helped me understand the principles involved. Similarly, I was really messing up Ram Jet Rocket Dog using the e-collar to nick/burn for bad behavior, cast refusals or whatever. Timing is critical.

    BUT... here's where I disagree with you. I'm now using the e-collar at a level that really is a vibration. (Tritronix/Garmin level 2) And not to break her focus but to convey "YES" "GOOD GIRL" "THAT'S IT!!!" and the timing is less critical. We're not using it (ever!!!) to teach a behavior but to reinforce it. I'm still a terrible klutz but this seems to be very powerful for conditioning.

 



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